Books like Byzantium — picked by fans

The end of the Empire has had me gripped since I was a boy.

Eagle in the Snow catapults you right into the dying state and right to its edge. I found myself walking the imperial borders in snowbound Germania, wondering if and when the Roman world was about to collapse beneath my feet.

It is one of those novels that leaves you feeling like you’ve lived another life, and that feeling has stayed with me ever since. A magical piece of historical fiction.

Manfredi is a genius at whisking you back in time to the era of his stories, and this tale is probably the best example.

I found myself gripped by the opening: the dwindling Empire is riddled with invading tribes, and all seems lost. Just as the Roman boy emperor Romulus Augustulus and his generals hatch a plan to raise a new legion and turn the tide, the army of Odoacer swoops in across the capital and ends the Western Roman Empire forever.

What a start! I was left dazed, seeing the ashes of the Empire swirling around me in my mind’s eye. From there, I was with the small cadre of survivors who set out on the most incredible adventure that would prove foundational to the next phase of history – the Dark Ages!

What if Rome never fell? That was enough to sell me this book, and into a vastly changed, modern-day Roman state I ventured.

The story tugs and tests your expectations – for much of the Roman world has become, by necessity, similar to our own, governed by technology, bureaucracy, and dominated by worldwide trade. But at its kernel, the age-old facets of imperial Rome remain – Praetorian Guards, devious intrigue… and crucifixion!

Rome fell to the barbarians. Did it? I have always enjoyed examining this and other suggested reasons for the empire’s fall, and have never quite been able to pinpoint any one cause.

In this book, the aptly named Barbero dissects the reality of what we mean by ‘barbarian’, and paints a rich picture of time and geography to chart out the emergence, movement, and net effect on imperial Rome of tribes like the Visigoths, the Vandals, the Franks, the Alans, the Huns, and many, many more.

I found that the investigation raised more questions than answers, and that only made the puzzle of Rome’s fall even more intriguing.

Peter Heather’s work is one of the broadest in scope on the topic of the European ‘Barbarians’, while still retaining enough detail to keep the reader’s attention pinned. A great starter for this period of history, encompassing the entire first millennium AD, the time when the heart of European civilization gradually moved from the Mediterranean South to the cold Barbarian North. It reads like a novel – but is supported by years of painstaking research. If you can only read one book on Barbarian Europe, this is the book.

No other book has inspired my own work as much as this one, although it is about far more than the history of Sicily.

McCormick found extensive evidence for travel and communication in the early medieval Mediterranean—a period in which it was previously thought that long-distance trade had all but stopped after the decline of the Roman Empire.

McCormick’s method was to collect every tiny anecdote he could find about something or someone that went from one place to another across the Sea. All these tidbits of data added up to something huge, and showed clearly that travel and exchange across the Mediterranean did not end when the Roman Empire did. To the contrary, the Mediterranean Sea in these centuries was teeming with people of all faiths, carrying coins and packages of trade goods on ships sailing between Christian and Muslim controlled regions.

His method, of collating masses of data… show more.

I was in love the moment I opened an abridged version of Gibbon’s magnum opus as a young history buff, and was even more delighted when I sought out the multivolume full experience.

Gibbon’s view of the Roman Empire is magisterial and his footnotes are a cranky delight; he’s up-front when his sources have axes to grind and sourly suspicious of his own motivations.

Sure, he’s an 18th-century British colonialist with all that entails. He’s also deliciously ironic, hilariously sardonic, and does his mightiest justice when he’s skewering folly and tyranny of any stripe.

After reading about fascinating emperors, cities, and wars, one might begin to ponder larger questions like how the late Roman (early Byzantine) government functioned and what its society was like. This book is a detailed analysis of these issues.

To my mind, it is one of the best history books ever written about the early Byzantine Empire. It can be approached as a reference work, and one can seek out sections that seem interesting such as the conditions of service in the army, the social origins of the clergy, the taxation system, or the powers behind the throne.

The breadth and depth of Jones’ learning is impressive and on full display in this classic.

This work of historical fiction attracted me to the study of the Byzantine Empire.

I read it as a first-year university student and was astonished at its story of intrigue, mutilation, and murder in a medieval, Christian Roman Empire. Fans of medieval fantasy such as George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series might be drawn to this riveting and dramatic tale.

This story of the life of the volcanic and unpredictable emperor Justinian II (r. 685-695 and 705-711 A.D.) welcomed me to the Byzantine world, and perhaps it will do the same for you!

I love this book because it is the personal memoirs of a Byzantine statesman, Michael Psellus (c.1022-c.1080), who lived through the dramatic reversal of fortune of the mid-eleventh century. He tells the story through the lives of the emperors and empresses who ruled during his lifetime. To appreciate Psellus’ work, it is better to skip the first two biographies which are largely based on hearsay, and to start with the account of Romanos III (1028-1034). As the author himself says ‘I both saw Romanos and on one occasion actually talked to him.’

As Psellus rose through the ranks of the palace bureaucracy, he became the secretary and close adviser to one emperor after another. He describes events as he himself witnessed them, recording conversations and anecdotes, often illuminating the personal qualities and failings of the imperial incumbents. The work tails off at the end as Psellus reaches the time of… show more.